Sunday Sermon: Nuts of all stripes, revisited

So, the pastor of the church attended by the nutjob who shot up a health club in California is shocked — shocked! — to learn that one of his parishioners used his religion to justify his twisted hatred for women (and some other folks besides).

Weird. Are we talking about the same Bible? The one where God destroys a city because he’s so homophobic? The one where God drowns nearly everyone in the entire world because he’s so disappointed with the people he created?

The one where God strikes down the firstborn son in every household in an entire country just because of the actions of the despot who happens to be in power there? The same God who dictates that rebellious offspring should be stoned to death?

The news account quotes the pastor thusly: “It’s clear that this man acted on his own,” he said. “From bitterness and rage.” Sounds pretty Godly to me.

As Simon points out, Lot was spared by God, after being so offended by the notion of gay sex (or gay rape) that he offered his daughters (apparently without seeking their consent) to prevent gay activity (we can quibble about whether the men were seeking consenting partners or unconsenting victims, but either way, Lot offered them his daughters to forestall such activity).

No it wasn’t, considering how he save Lot after he offered his own daughters to be raped. Or considering that the Bible’s punishment for raping a virgin is actually quite lenient (pay 50 shekels of silver to the father and you get to marry your victim) and there is the case of the Midianites describe in ‘Numbers’, where Moses makes sure to kill all the men (including infants) and the older women (that had known men) but keeps the ‘women children’ as rape victims.

I do, however, agree with you that the sin of Sodom being homosexuality has no grounding in the Bible itself and may very well be a later tradition.
Their sin, as described in the Bible, might be the breach of the traditions of hospitality.